(Phys.org) —A team of researchers with members from China, Norway and France has built a computer simulation that shows that the Sahara desert came about far earlier than conventional thinking suggests. In their paper published ...

(Phys.org) —An international team of physicists, led by a research group at the University of Arkansas, has discovered that heating can be used to control the curvature of ripples in freestanding graphene.

We often experience difficulties in identifying the accurate shape of dynamic and fluctuating objects. This is especially the case in the nanoscale world of biomolecules. The research group lead by Professor Koichi Kato of ...

The Asian monsoon already existed 40 million years ago during a period of high atmospheric carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures, reports an international research team led by a University of Arizona geoscientist.

When you're merging onto the Beltway around the nation's capital, you want to go from 20 to 70 mph now. Supercapacitors, often built from a two-dimensional material called graphene, have the potential to provide electric ...

When we look at the Solar System, what clues show us how it formed? We can see pieces of its formation in asteroids, comets and other small bodies that cluster on the fringes of our neighborhood (and sometimes, fly closer ...

Ion channels are involved in many physiological and pathophysiological processes throughout the human body. A young team of researchers led by pharmacologist Anna Stary-Weinzinger from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, ...

With a method known as finite element analysis (FEA), engineers can generate 3-D digital models of large structures to simulate how they'll fare under stress, vibrations, heat, and other real-world conditions.

Simulation

Simulation is the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system.

Simulation is used in many contexts, including the modeling of natural systems or human systems in order to gain insight into their functioning. Other contexts include simulation of technology for performance optimization, safety engineering, testing, training and education. Simulation can be used to show the eventual real effects of alternative conditions and courses of action.

Key issues in simulation include acquisition of valid source information about the relevent selection of key characteristics and behaviours, the use of simplifying approximations and assumptions within the simulation, and fidelity and validity of the simulation outcomes.